The Tapes Archive

Steve Newton: Hello.

Dio: Hello, speak to Steve.

Steve Newton: This is Steve.

Dio: Steve, this is Ronnie Dio.

Steve Newton: How are you, Ron?

Dio: How’re you doing?

Steve Newton: Pretty good.

Dio: We all set to do this one?

Steve Newton: Yeah, yeah.

Dio: Great.

Steve Newton: How’s the tour going?

Dio: We’ve got a little bit of break now, which is the nicest part of it, I think. I’ve been on the road since August the 10th and we have only been off for about a week now. And we just have this brief little Christmas encounter and then we’re gonna come to you straight away on the 28th.

Steve Newton: Does the tour end on the 31st?

Dio: No, the tour doesn’t end until probably August again. We still have the dates in Canada to do, some more in the States followed by British tour, European tour, and then back for about three more months in the States.

Steve Newton: Oh, pretty heavy tour there.

Dio: Yeah, it’s a long one.

Steve Newton: Is the longest one you’ve ever taken?

Dio: I think it is the longest one I’ve done. I think the next longest one was in Sabbath, we were out for about nine months. But this one was, especially with the stage set that we’ve got, it seems kind of a shame to only use it for three months out of a year. We may as well get all the mileage we can out of it ’cause it’s such a great show, we want to take it as many places as possible.

Steve Newton: Yeah, from what I’ve been hearing about it, it’s quite a mind blower there.

Dio: Oh yeah, it’s a real monster.

Steve Newton: First off, I wanted to ask you what’s happening with “Hear ‘n Aid”?

Dio: “Hear’n Aid” should be released if not in January, then the very beginning of February. We wanted to make it kind of after the fact, after a lot of the Live Aid and “We Are the World” and et cetera, et cetera. We wanted to have it, not so much more special, but just to remove it a little bit, the kind of music that we play and the people who are involved in it are always accused of being something other than what they are anyway, something awful, so we thought we may as well take it all away and we’ll just separate ourselves from everybody ’cause I guess that’s what they’ll do to us anyway. Really the problem was in logistics. We have an album that will be released from this project as well. And the problem with time and that is that everybody’s always working. Everybody who plays this kind of music is usually out on the road, so getting them all together and getting all the bits and pieces together for a one-time proper release has been a bit difficult. It’ll be January for the single, which is called “Stars” and a video as well that was done for “Stars” and with ‘Stars”, that’ll be released as well. And then probably about a month after that should be the album.

Steve Newton: Oh, what songs are on the album? Who plays ’em?

Dio: Well they’ll all be. As of yet, we haven’t got them all together. They’ll be as yet unreleased tracks by a lot of good people. Judas Priest are gonna give one, Maiden, they’re gonna do one, we’re gonna do one. I think Dokken’s gonna do one. I think Quiet Riot are gonna do one. I’ve quite a few people and there are a lot of others who we haven’t got the planning for yet, but those are some of the people involved.

Steve Newton: Looking forward to that one.

Dio: Yeah, it’ll be great.

Steve Newton: Do you still write songs while watching sports on TV?

Dio: I do, yeah, I do. All the albums that I’ve done, I think I’ve been watching some kind of sporting event and only because it really relaxes me. There’s no music in the background and I love athletics anyway. And it’s kind of my fantasy, I always wanted to be a great sports star. So I’m writing about fantasy things while I’m watching my fantasy, so it all works for me.

Steve Newton: What’s your favorite sport to watch?

Dio: Well, my favorite sport to write by is basketball. But I would say my favorite sport is football.

Steve Newton: You started out as a trumpet player.

Dio: Yeah.

Steve Newton: When you were five.

Dio: That’s right.

Steve Newton: How did you like that?

Dio: I didn’t care for it very much, to tell you the truth. I was one of those kids who had to be forced to practice and all I wanted to do was play baseball and play football or ride my bike, whatever it was. When you’re five years old, you want five-year-old things. I think it made me grow up a lot faster, it made me a little bit harder because I had to do something that I really didn’t want to do. Did pursue it, did go after it. My folks thought it was important and after all, they were bigger than me and so I had to do what they said. It was great training for me as a singer, especially. It was great training as a musician, too. I mean, I learned how to read, how to write, and it introduced me to classical music, which is something I love a lot.

Steve Newton: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. I interviewed Yngwie about a month ago and he said he’s heavily into that, classical. Is that the same with you?

Dio: Well, I think that, I think for a start, most guitar players are into classical music because a lot of the technique is very, especially violin technique, is the same as guitar technique. You’ll find probably that a lot of guitar players will tell you that Vivaldi is one of their favorite composers. I imagine Yngwie probably told you that, too. Vivaldi seems to be someone that they all love just because of the technique, the way he wrote; it seems guitarish in nature. For me, I’ve always been a Bach lover. I’ve always been into Bach and Beethoven for their whole works, their whole pieces. I don’t just single out one instrument or one passage, I like all the things that they were able to conceive, especially Bach who, to me, was like, if he had lived today, he’d be up on the stage with a guitar in his hand, bro. Real rock ‘n roller.

Steve Newton: Do you listen to classical in your spare time or?

Dio: Yeah, I do. That’s normally what I listen to when I’m home and I’m off the road. And especially if I’m composing or if I’m doing something for an album, I’ll definitely be listening to classical music because I don’t wanna listen to anything else that’s of the same nature; I may unconsciously steal from it or borrow from it. I wouldn’t do it purposely, but listening to classical music really cleanses my mind after a long tour and after having to compose in a real hard rock vein.

Steve Newton: A lot of people can’t seem to believe that people that are into hard rock, bordering on heavy metal will be interested in classical.

Dio: Well, I think those are pretty ignorant people who think that a janitor can’t like classical music, that he should have to be a white-collar worker to like classical music anymore than a white-collar worker can’t love heavy metal, hard rock music, or anything else. Music is given to us to color our world and some people like blue, some people like green, some people like the combination of both. It’s just a matter of personal taste and I don’t think that it matters what you do or what your main interest is. I think music especially should be enjoyed and liked in its entirety by everyone. I guess it’s just because, as I said earlier in the conversation, we’re always having stones thrown at us for being rebels or idiots or needing baths or haircuts or whatever and people don’t take the time to stop and look inside the package. They just look outside the package and make a judgment and that’s completely and terribly wrong. That’s one of the problems in this world today.

Steve Newton: What about singers? Which ones do you admire the most?

Dio: Me. I don’t really admire an awful lot of singers. I think it’s because I know what they’re doing and what they’re either capable or incapable of and I don’t hear all that many great singers, I tell who has good singers. Canadian lad is Mike Reno. I think Mike’s a really good singer.

Steve Newton: Loverboy.

Dio: Yeah, the music is a lot softer and a lot more commercially-oriented than the music that myself make, but he’s got great pipes and a lot of control, good technique. I think he’s a really good singer. As far as admiring or idolizing or learning or being influenced by others, no, I’m not really. And Mike Reno obviously is not the only good singer out there today. Off the top of my head, I think Mike’s a really good singer and I’m not saying it because he’s Canadian ’cause there happened to be a hell of a lot of good American singers and British singers.

Steve Newton: You mentioned in one magazine story that you like Barbra Streisand.

Dio: Yeah, absolutely, I think she’s the best female vocalist ever. I mean, nobody else, anyone can possibly touch the tools that she has. She’s fabulous.

Steve Newton: How’s the new album doing?

Dio: It’s done very well. It’s done as well as the two prior to it. It’s very rapidly approaching platinum. I think it’s probably at 900,000 now in America. Done extremely well in the rest of the world. Very, very well in Europe as a matter of fact. See the problem at this particular moment is that there’s not very much radio play, especially in this country because of all of the occult situations, the PMRC, all of that has really soured a lot of people to playing this music. That’s very stupid, by the way, but it really has hurt. If your music can’t be heard, nobody’s gonna know that it’s available or even know that they like it or dislike it, so then they won’t buy. In a climate where there’s not a lot of sales happening, our product always does well. We always have a very broad base of loyal supporters who are always gonna be there and then our show and word of mouth converts the others, so I’m very pleased with it.

Steve Newton: Did those PMRC come down on Dio for having a couple messages and that?

Dio: We’ve not nearly been attacked as much as some of the others have, but then again, we didn’t deserve to be attacked in the first place. I don’t write that kind of material. They have preconceived notions as to what someone is going to be because he or she is in heavy metal music and right away the stamp is on there. You’re heavy metal? Then you must be as bad as Blackie Lawless or as Dee Snider or whoever they think is bad. It’s not been nearly as vicious for us as it has been for a few.

Steve Newton: Are you interested in the occult at all?

Dio: I have no interest in black magic whatsoever. I’ve always been a practitioner of white magic, which is for good. I know anything you’d wanna know about the occult because I’ve studied it for a long time. Ignorance leads you down the wrong path. I don’t wanna be ignorant about it. I learned long ago that you don’t meddle with spirits; you don’t meddle with good ones, you don’t meddle with bad ones ’cause once you open the door and let them in, they never go away. You can’t say, “Well, you’re time’s up, bye.” You’re opening up something horrible there when that happens. So my advice to anyone is to just stay away from any kind of black magic. White magic is fine.

Steve Newton: Didn’t you have some strange experiences while recording Rainbow’s, “Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll”? Some spirit?

Dio: We had some real weird devil experiences with a real bad spirit that was there posing as Baal, who was the earliest devil worshipped by the primitive people. And we got someone who claimed to be Baal and created a lot of chaos up there at the studio. Tapes would stop and we’d go into a locked room and machines would suddenly go on.

Steve Newton: I heard that he tried to kill your wife or something.

Dio: Yeah, he pushed her down the stairs. We had a lot of problems with that one, but we got over it. It was our own fault because we started dabbling again and calling up something that we shouldn’t have dealt with. Being strong believers in God. And by God, I mean, I’m not talking about the God that perhaps everyone thinks of. Feelings of religion are a lot different than others. Mine is that God and the devil reside in both of us, in all of us. And then you just walk that fine line teetering on the brink. You can choose either the good way or the bad way. And again, the God I’m talking about, we believe in, we believe in something good, not something bad. And because of that strong belief that all of us had in that band, we were able to overcome any problems that might have arisen because of dabbling in the dark side. But yeah, we had some problems with that one.

Steve Newton: Looking back, I just wanted to ask you, stepping into Black Sabbath, was that a challenge to step into Ozzy’s shoes?

Dio: Well, as I said before, it’s not very difficult to step in the shoes of someone who’s been barefoot all his life. So that really is not too much of a problem for me. I mean, how could anyone possibly compare Ozzy Osborne to Ronnie Dio, especially as a singer? Ozzy’s a character, it’s what Ozzy is. He doesn’t sing, he does something else. He has heart attacks on stage, he hurts animals, and I guess that’s what Ozzy does. I have no bone to pick with Ozzy; Ozzy happens to be a friend. But I just always make that statement when we’re talking about stepping into somebody’s shoes. There was no problem stepping into, again, someone’s shoes whose shoes didn’t fit. They were too small for me. I make my own shoes. It was a challenge to be into that whole situation. The challenge was to be in Black Sabbath, not to have anything to do with Ozzy. It had nothing to do with Ozzy at all. That band was a collection of Tony, Geezer, Bill, and Ozzy. It wasn’t Ozzy that made it go as proof of the fact that when Ozzy was no longer in the band, we survived better than we did when Ozzy was in the band, especially within the last three albums that Ozzy did with the band and the three albums that I did with the band, the comparison is pretty staggering really. It was not a problem for me at all to be inside that band. It was a great challenge and I enjoyed it very much. It was a chance for me to take a band that had gotten burned up and had nothing but ashes left and to make ’em rise up outta the ashes again and give respectability to a band that deserves respectability and deserved it then.

Steve Newton: I didn’t mean a challenge as far as singing… 

Dio: – Oh I’m not having a go at you, believe me, I’m not.. But the question has been asked a lot of times and put that particular way. But there was a challenge. The challenge was to be in that band, to be in a band that was a legend and to be more or less of an interloper in that situation, someone who had not grown up within Black Sabbath and to now have to prove himself worthy of being in a band that a lot of people love. That was the challenge.

Steve Newton: I meant more or less fan-wise, people would shout, “Where’s Ozzy? and that.

Dio: Well, that’s what I meant. The challenge was to be part of the band that they remember that was Tony, Ozzy, Geezer, and Bill and now was Tony, Geezer, Bill, and who? Ronnie James Dio. See what he’s got to prove. And that was the challenge then.

Steve Newton: What do you think of Ozzy’s solo stuff?

Dio: Well, I think he was pretty lucky that he had Randy, for a start and then when he lost Randy, he lost most of it, I guess. He was very lucky he got Bob Daisley for two albums to write all the material for him ’cause Ozzy is notoriously a non-writer. You may see a credit there. Well, we’ll just have to see who’s written his material for him this time because Bob’s no longer in the band. His material’s good, it’s well done, it’s interesting. Again, Ozzy, he’s got a lot of character and I’ve quite liked the things he’s done.

Steve Newton: I really liked the album you did with Sabbath, “Heaven and Hell”. I haven’t heard the “Mob Rules” yet, but I think I’d probably like one, too.

Dio: Yeah, I think “Mob Rules” was actually a better album than “Heaven and Hell”, but “Heaven and Hell” was the first of the two and so therefore there was a lot more energy and a lot more love inside that album. After a while it got to be not quite so wonderful personally anymore and I think it starts to show in albums that you do. If you’re not happy, then that’s what you get, an unhappy album.

Steve Newton: You think “Heaven and Hell” paved the way for a resurgence of heavy metal?

Dio: It was absolutely one of the pillars of the resurgence in that kind of music, yes, absolutely.

Steve Newton: What are your favorite tunes that you did with Sabbath?

Dio: “Heaven and Hell” is my favorite song. “Die Young” is another song I like very much from the LP.

Steve Newton: I like “Neon Knights”.

Dio: “Neon Knights” is another of my favorites. “Mob Rules” is another one of my favorites. There were a lot of songs on those LPs I liked, some I didn’t. There was a song called “Country Girl” that I did like very much. Some I didn’t care for. I’m never pleased with anything I do to any great degree. There are some that stand out in my mind, “Heaven and Hell”, of course, because it said something I wanted to say. I thought it was played very, very well and it was a song, the kind of song that nobody else had ever done before. That is my favorite. I think of all the things I’ve done, I think that’s my favorite song.

Steve Newton: Have you ever thought of trying to produce other rock acts like what happened with Roger Glover, what he did for “Elf”?

Dio: Well, I’ve dabbled in a lot of production and, of course, I produce my own material. I did most of the production in Rainbow, most of the production in Sabbath even though we weren’t able to take the credit for it because of contractual obligations. I’ve always been involved in everything I’ve done, always produced myself as a singer. I’ve had a lot of requests to do a lot of bands. I just haven’t had the time. It’s not fair for me to take that time away from this band, it’s not fair for me to give only a bit of myself to someone I’m gonna produce. If you’re gonna be a producer, then go ahead and do it all the way, don’t do it in bit and pieces. So when the time comes and there is more time, I definitely will do it.

Steve Newton: Is it true that you have a degree in pharmacy?

Dio: That’s right.

Steve Newton: You never actually used it for?

Dio: Oh no, I’ve forgotten so much of it.

Steve Newton: Are you still friends with Blackmore?

Dio: I haven’t seen Ritchie in two or three years. I don’t know if we’re friends or not. I don’t think so.

Steve Newton: How do you rate him as a guitarist?

Dio: These days, average. In the early days, brilliant. But he’s not done anything different. He’s still is the same as he always was. He hasn’t, “He hasn’t… I mean, there are guitar players that I hear that are 15 years old and just blow him out the back door. The thing that Ritchie has is he has, he’s got great technique. He plays with a lot of emotional ability, but I just don’t think that a guitar player who has the great tools that Ritchie has has done anything with ’em. He’s stuck in the same kind of music time after time after time. Every song begins with Ritchie, he plays a solo in the middle, and ends with Ritchie. I’ll always admire Ritchie for what he was, but when we’re talking about him in today’s world, I just don’t think that he’s come up to the standards of the young kids who really care about their instruments.

Steve Newton: A lot of people are depending on Yngwie Malmsteen to take the torch.

Dio: That’s a distinct possibility. It could happen. Yngwie has to learn how to write first, that’s his problem. He’s a great guitar player and he can play all the things that Ritchie could play and he probably plays most of them a lot faster, but Ritchie knows how to write, he knows how to get the best out of his instrument. Whereas Yngwie, at this particular point, is still, he’s still learning. He’s still very young, he’s learning his craft. He’s gotta learn. He’s got a lot more years to go before he’s going to be the one who can take that torch from Ritchie.

Steve Newton: Well, hope the tour goes well for you.

Dio: Thank you, Steve, I hope you enjoy the show.

Steve Newton: Yeah, I will.

Dio: You’re gonna come, aren’t you?

Steve Newton: Oh yeah, of course.

Dio: All right, great. You’ll love it.

Steve Newton: I was wondering could it be possible at all to get a backstage pass?

Dio: Sure, absolutely. Well, I’ll have that for you, it’ll be at the will call window, tickets and passes.

Steve Newton: Wow. Thanks a lot, Ronnie.

Dio: No problem, Steve.

Steve Newton: That’s great.

Dio: I want you to see the show ’cause I know you’ll like it and we’ll talk afterwards.

Steve Newton: Okay, thanks a lot, Ronnie.

Dio: Okay, Steve, thank you, my friend.

Steve Newton: See you, bye.

Dio: All right, bye bye.